


F

by himitsutsubasa



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: AU, Alternate Meeting, Chatting & Messaging, Internet, M/M, relective, third person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 05:17:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1066203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/himitsutsubasa/pseuds/himitsutsubasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fluid. A college student who is not yet a quartermaster and a 00-agent who has not yet seen the sky fall strike up a conversation on the internet. This is the before and after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	F

There are some things that Q will not tell James, things that are his secret alone. She is one of those things, a promise he buried inside his chest until he almost forgot her. Even then, he still feels her there.

He is nineteen, and his name is not yet Q, when he meets her and he falls in love instantly.

She’s whip smart, not like him, but pretty close for the average human. She doesn’t think twice about pushing him to work when the professor comes up with partner assignments.  She proofreads his work, even though he doesn’t need it. She double checks his sources, even though he doesn’t need that either. She laughs like it means absolutely nothing that her perfectionism has gotten her this far.

Her name is nothing to him, erased with the memory of her face. But still, she remains a promise that he meant to keep.

* * *

In their line of work, or his study of anyway, it’s not a surprise that he sees her again. She taps out words from the other end of the line and he watches the text scrolls across the screen.

Of course she went into private security. Of course she’s happily in a relationship. Of course she’s inviting him to join her online forum.

He doesn’t forget the day he told her what he wanted. He doesn’t forget the day she told him she wanted the exact same thing. He doesn’t forget that they knew they weren’t meant for each other.

He accepts, because it’s her and he could never say no to any invitation from her.

The others at the registration office, because there are other ways to pay for a college education, look at him funny when he prints the little card on the office temp ID maker. He knows it’s against protocol, but he can’t bring himself to care.

He logs on to her website and types the little boxed code on the card into the box that rests at the bottom left of the screen. A browser window opens and he starts typing. The system is odd and he finds himself intrigued by the turnaround way she uses. The code on the card is the sign in name, the username, the first part of the password, and his choice as the second part. It’s confusing and a little weird, but he imagines that it makes security a little easier when people have no idea what they are trying to put together. He fills out the basic information and starts browsing.

He ends up at an open forum and finds that he is happy. His username is simple, just his initials. The people there are complex, like strings of code he unwinds in his free time.

She’s there and in every word he can feel her smile on him.

He is twenty when he realizes he isn’t in love with her the way he thought he was.

* * *

James has secrets. All double 0 agents do. He has the wife he put into the ground, the girl he married back before he was a double 0 agent. He doesn’t miss her as much. Not when they started drifting each other slowly after the ceremony. He has his parents, who meant the world to boy who had nothing else. He has a home that isn’t a home anymore.

It isn’t a surprise though that something that he held close, and he holds only the dead close now, comes back.

The boy is a man now, full fleshed out and tough. He’s a field agent and ready for anything. Or at least he thinks he is.

He hands James a card, a reminder of the time James covered for him when the school’s hall monitors asked to see their ID’s.

He takes the card and follows the instructions. It is paper and if folds easily. There is a small line of numbers and a website on the back. He types it into his computer when he finally gets home.  (Somehow he manages to drag that kid, who was he kidding when he said he could take anything, back to the motherland.) The web-face is clean, smooth, and sleek. He can appreciate that. There are no fancy motifs, just a sloping letter “F” on the face next to a box at the bottom of the screen. He likes the disproportionate focus to the left side of his screen.

It feels right.

He logs on and picks a username that doesn’t make him sound pretentious. It doesn’t take him long to find his friend, somehow logged in from the hospital and the young lady he is chatting with.

There is a third one though, a GH, and he takes no time to request a private chat after he sees the razor sharp wit and flighty takes on the occurrences.

It starts then. He logs on when he can and offers what many would deem him a cradle robber for.

* * *

Q, who isn’t Q at the time, signs on when he can and that amounts to almost every day. He knows that his chat partner isn’t a man with free time and constant internet access. He tries to be there when he can. He’s young and chats from one A.M. to four A.M. with a man who says it’s Three P.M. where he is and the fog has really just disappeared from San Francisco. He tries not to read too much into the fact that this is the first time in their nine month relationship that his chat partner has said anything about location. He knows that that isn’t the permanent location.

He’s not stupid and I.P. addresses are not that hard to follow.

* * *

 James settles in for the night, glad the mission is over for once. He is back in England finally and signs in. He knows that people are watching. He almost got hided for the slip in San Francisco. But what good is an agent that doesn’t push his limits? MI6 checks out everyone he communicates with. If they had a problem, they would have told him by now.

It feels good, he thinks, as the person on the other end of the line of text asks him if he is happy. He is very happy with his precious, precocious boy. He tells him that much.

He can practically feel the heat of gratitude in the reply.

He likes it like this, telling the young college student what to do. He likes praising him after a test score gone right, and scolding him when it goes wrong. He likes to think this is good practice in seduction.

He knows otherwise.

He likes the feeling that this kid, who didn’t have a clue about what he wanted to do with his life, has some direction. Sure, compared to what the other people, believing that the founder is not monitoring them, on this site do, they are nothing.  James likes it that way. This is one of the few things that he doesn’t want to turn into sex.

Yes, he finds that hard to believe himself.

But then, GH makes a witty comment about Tolstoy and he can’t help but think that if he ever got a chance to meet this person in real life, and has no illusions over what it would be like, he would be very happy to just have a cup of coffee and talk about the use of imagery and motifs in poetry.

* * *

Q, who still isn’t Q, gets the letter in the mail sometime his last year. He isn’t all that special, not applying himself to make big things happen like his classmates until his third year, when his special chat mate started checking up on him regularly.  

He signs it without a second thought, but not before logging in to say his last good byes.

This is what Ulysses would have wanted.

After that, he erases himself. The only part that he leaves untouched, out of respect to two very important people in his life, is his last comment in the private room.

* * *

James isn’t surprised when the boy says good bye. They all leave eventually. He finds some solace in the way that he left him better off than when he started. The boy has a job now, a good one. He has a cat that is feeling better after James asked after how to treat a cat with arthritis in Istanbul. He is happy.

That is all James ever wanted for him. So, it makes no difference to him as he signs out of the site for the last time. The card has already been destroyed and his code, the sign in name, and his username, the first part of his password, have been locked away.

He blocks the site from his browser history and looks the IT department in the eye the next day.

* * *

There are some things that Q will not tell James, things that are his secret alone. He has a cat that he loved more than anything in the sixth grade, which died giving birth to a litter of fluffy, adorable kittens. He has Atlas, one of those kittens, who is getting old now and may pass on any day. He has his first code, the first time he actually tried to challenge himself, buried in his heart. He has a friend who got him through university, who chatted from Beijing and San Francisco, and sometimes from a flat in downtown London.

When he gets the invitation in his inbox, he is not surprised it got past his security. She’s gotten better over the years even if he gave her specifically less security to get through to contact him.

He plays the video at home watching her kind smile fills the screen. She complains about the videos she’s making and how she really doesn’t want to make personalized messages for anyone other than a few people she finds interesting. He’s a little pleased that he’s the one getting her complaining. That said, he’s one of the few getting a real personalized message. He finds it funny in its own way.

She mentions that she is sending one to Ulysses and he feels like he hasn’t heard that name in a long time.

She smiles like she has some big secret, and a small part of him thinks that is isn’t on any server he can touch, and he can touch them all, if she smiles like that. He replies back with a confirmation and clears his schedule on Saturday night.   

* * *

James has secrets. All double 0 agents do. He has an agent-friend who has gone into desk work. He has Vesper, who he still holds close to his heart. He has a home that wasn’t home, that has been burned to the ground. He has a man who could have been his friend in another life, destroy his ancestral home. He has a mother, who wasn’t his mother, who is dead. He doesn’t have a flat, and he never considered that to be home either. He has a friend, one of the few he has ever made, who is somewhere on the cyber net, lost among the millions of code generators and buried forever from his sight.

He gets an email from a familiar name and he wonders how it got past the new Quartermaster and his up-to-date-to-the-second security system.  He opens it anyway and revels in the flowing “F” that fills his screen before it fades away.

A beautiful, young woman fills the screen and he feels a sort of longing. She has dark hair and light eyes and he feels a small twinge of regret. She looks like Q almost, if he had been born a woman. She looks like Vesper, and he thinks now that if that is true, then his longing at seeing he boy must be reasonable to a certain extent.

The face smiles and she says, practically purring in a way that shows she does not mean it, and he knows that she does not, he has done the same purr before, that he is invited to a special meeting. It’s for the members of her site, the ones that she deemed the most worthy of invitation that get a personal e-invite. She mentions that a certain GH has already confirmed his invitation and he knows that these truly are personal. She smirks as she refers to him with the fake name he put into the registration form.

James sighs at the screen and wonders if he is free next Saturday.

* * *

Of course, Q, who is now Q, is late. He tries to save the world and he ends up late.

She doesn’t mid though, when he shows up underdressed for the occasion. She’s just happy that he’s there to save her from a very boring lawyer who somehow got invited. He must be so much more interesting online.

She hugs him and he thinks that this is the way things should be. They are good friends and the best of the internet. She smiles like he is the whole world.

He isn’t though, and she calls him by name he hasn’t heard in years. Here hasn’t been anyone to call him that in a long time. He doesn’t think about the brothers he has, but never sees.

They laugh and drink and they night is still young. She introduces him to her man, a fellow that he thinks he saw at some point during his time as an intern to national security. He’s not sure.

They dance away and he smiles because she looks so pretty twirling to Frank Sinatra in her red dress and heels. She’s a part of him and he is happy that she is.

* * *

James arrives just as the party is winding down because saving the world takes time and flight from Budapest takes longer than the average two and a half hours when security wants to arrest you. He orders a dry martini from the bar because he isn’t looking to get drunk. He’s just here to see if a familiar conversationalist is here.

Of course, he could stop by headquarters first and return his gear to Q, but he knows from a text from the Quartermaster that he’s gone out for the evening and since the gun, if it is still in one piece, is extremely valuable and as such he should return it to Q in person Sunday morning.

James can still feel the special grip in his hand and the feather light trigger against his index finger. It is still in one piece, if not exactly usable one piece, and he would not mind having it on him for a few hours longer. He sips the drink as the people pass by. He isn’t over dressed, like that is even possible, for once, his insurgent-killing suit is perfect for the occasion. He turns to his left and wonders how any desk worker ever thinks they can sneak up on him.

They talk for a little while, until the lovely young woman from the video appears in the range of his vision. She’s gorgeous and deadly in a red dress, like a trigger-bomb present to be unwrapped. From the arm of a specific desk worker snaking around her waist, he’s not the only one thinking the same way.

She laughs at his jokes and subtly flirts back; her heart isn’t in it, he knows that.  She calls him by his user name and mentions that there is a very special someone waiting for him. She tilts her head over to a shadowed booth and pulls a now very confused desk worker away.

James isn’t one to draw out surprises. He wants to know, if only a little who that person is. Like the guided bullet he is, he makes a beeline for the booth. The dim lighting and dark fabric act as a perfect disguise for whoever in inside.

When he finally sees who, he is, of once in his life, pleasantly surprised.

* * *

Q, who is now Q, blinks in the dim lighting as a man sits down in front of him. He knows that the security here is tough and there is no question that even with his skills, the men would have asked for ID. There is only one solution then.

He says the name.

007 smiles in a way that says he isn’t 007. He is James Bond, provocateur, agent, lover, spy, and midnight web chatter.

There are some things that Q will not tell James, things that are his secret alone. This is not one of them.

**Author's Note:**

> I was originally going to write this for another fandom, but I figured it would work really well with 00Q. I'm kind of glad I did. Sorry this isn't the usual stuff though.


End file.
